Kunigas Kristupas Marija Švirmickas – knygnešys, švietėjas, Sibiro tremtinių sielovadininkas
ENThe year 2014 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth and the 120th anniversary of the death of Father Kristupas Marija Švirmickas (1814-1894), born in the village Vamupiai, near Marijampolė. Father Kristupas Švirmickas was ordained a priest in Seinai in 1837. He was a participant of the November Uprising, where he was severely wounded. In 1832 he joined the Marijonai Order in Marijampolė. He founded the first Lithuanian school for the deaf, which was operated by the Marijonai Monastery (1841). He became the leader of the convent (1844), the banned book smuggler (1842- 1846), and the first to be exiled to Siberia for the smuggling of banned Lithuanian and Polish literature from Prussia and France, and its illegal distribution all over Lithuania. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1846, and sent to Siberia in 1852. After the 1855 amnesty, he did not exercise his right to return to his homeland. He remained in Siberia to perform ministry for the Siberian exiles. The Metropolitan Decree of 10 December 1855 appointed him a permanent pastor for Irkutsk and military chaplain for the Siberian branch of the Tsarist Army. As a pastor, he served the Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Belarusian and Estonian exile communities. He celebrated Holy Mass, baptised, listened to confessions, taught, performed weddings, comforted and strengthened in places thousands of kilometers away in eastern Siberia. He founded an orphanage, a school where he taught, and a library for the exiles.He built a brick church in Neo-Gothic style in Irkutsk (1884). He served as a pastor in one of the biggest Siberian parishes for forty years. His death on 30 November 1894 was a result of injuries that the priest had sustained during an attack by unknown perpetrators. He was buried in the Pantheon of Merit (the Cemetery of Jerusalem) in Irkutsk. During the Soviet period the graves and the Pantheon were completely destroyed; the Central Park of Culture and Recreation was created in their place.
